Sometimes photo reference is absolutely neccesary. I, personally, have never seen a wolf in the wild. Seeing as they are my favorite animals, I have tons of books on them, lots of photos on my HD, seen tons of "discovery channel" specials and all that.

Those things can all be seen as photo references, because even a still frame of a tv show is sort of a photo right? So essentially, everything I know about how a wolf looks came from a photo. The only way I can gain a higher understanding about the structure of a wolf's anatomy is to look at more references. In my spare time I will sketch up wolves out of my head, but they don't look near as good as they do if I use a reference.
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I used a photo reference for this, it was based off a painting by some artist. I was probably 16 or 17 when I made that? I don't think there was any way I could have made an image of that quality without using a reference. And nobody can tell me that I didn't work hard on it just because I used a reference. A reference is a tool. That's all.

Hello, i will just add my 2 cents to the debats, im pretty new when it comes to digital painting (in fact i did 2 real digital paintings until now) i kinda used photo references for both, but feel a lot more proud about the second pic because how i used them, let me explain.

My frst pic was a portrait of Angel (david boreanaz) i posted here in late november, i didnt copied it from a photo, in fact i had choosen my lighting and orientation of the face before having any reference, but with so many pictures of angel on the net i found some that had about the same setting (or mirrored) and at first i didnt used them a lot (just to get the main features), but i relied a lot on them in the ending process because the likeliness wasnt that great.
I'm quite happy with the result i get, and i stayed with my original lighting, but in the end the work came more to a "look to the photo / draw 3 pixels / look more / draw again / etc" and it was kinda boring, even if i had to adapt lighting and position a bit.

for my second pic i did some alien character from imagination, and i had a LOT of fun creating the lighting and trying to think "in 3D" the forms and shapes of what i was drawing, and for the face i only relied on my eye judgment in order to have something coherent. For this piece i used a photo reference for the position of the his hands, i know they are in a kinda simple setting but i had trouble getting a pose that didnt looked artificial, so i took a photo of myself holding a board in the position i wanted and i used that for the basic sketch of the pose, and of course i had to adapt the anatomy of my alien to this and the lighting, it was really fun and cool to do imho.
And i feel more proud about this second pic than the first because i honestly think it is a completely original work, i used a photo to help me to understand the pose i wanted and i adapted it (like joachim said about use of photo ref).

here is the pic and the ref :

But to conclude i dont think that Danny's (and others, i just dont have other name here) use of photo is less art than the other way, as long as the finishing piece is what the artist wanted to achieve i think the process was successful ... (I love your pic Danny and i dont care about the photo use)
What i only wanted to say is that personally i dont have lot of fun "copying" photos straight (but i love drawing from life) but i still need sometimes photos or other reference to have some part of my pics right, and as long as i add my own style and changes to it i do have fun

well sorry for the long message and sorry if it is unclear sometimes, some english words are still problematic for me and its very late here in france

I've been reading this thread for a while now, and I noticed only one thing. Almost every person wrote an incredibly long and rather detailed defence of who they agreed with and why. For a while there, I thought I was reading the script for the next, "Attorney's at Law"

I can't even begin to express how humorous it was to see that almost every person began their post with some sort of apology, or implication that they never intended to post in this thread - as though they were embarresed to even take part in such a trivial thread.

I imagine a bunch of tired graphic artists, sick of hitting the damn "refresh" button on their computer, all drugged up on lack of sleep or dope, and finally having to spout their two cents in. I know that at least in my case, this holds to be true.

freddio, I agree (almost), but I think the opposite . Artists who are just starting off should only use photo ref. to study and learn. It's not before you are a really experienced artist I think you should start using it in your work (then you will control the use of photo and imagination better). Atleast, "even" boris says it, it's for saving time. So, when doing personal stuff or things to learn, why do something that artists do to make more money in less time. They don't do it for the artistic part of it. So, why suddenly now, we should all just start finding magasines and start rippin off pictures ?!? When I do something personal, I feel that the thing that gives me the most is that I'm capable of visualizing my ideas and include as much imagination as possible....Isn't that what every artist actually want to do, as long as they are not being paid for it, to create something for a reason that means something personal to them, more than just that it could be mistaken to be a photo because it has been so closely copied.

And, just to mention it. Have you guys seen what boris did before he started to take photos and paint straight on top of it ? The quality of his work has just dropped from top to absolute bottom, both in quality and creativity. ANd, I think there's a good reason why frazetta is such a damn better artist than boris, he uses photos for study but still implement his own imagination and creativity. Just look how much more supple and better gestures he has on his characters....Boris's characters looks all like dead people smudged in oil to me (then I'm talking about his latest work after 70-80's).

danny, you breached that photographer's rights when you plagurized. whatever, i dont know how to spell it. the point is you not only didn't give this guy credit when you stole his pic, but you completely copied the damn thing. that my friend is something someone could easily sue you for, mister artist.

visigoth, i believe you use the photo references well because you don't just copy it to the T. You're actually using it as a reference, unlike danny is.

This is like a discussion on religion or politics. It's also like reading a tabloid or watching Jerry Springer ('Oh no, Synj did not just say that! Oh yes he did!' 'Joachim kinda makes sense' 'uh oh next post is from Cos' 'I hope Danny replies again with his fiery eyes flaring out via text on my monitor' 'Sit down you ho!' 'I had sex with my sister' etc.. etc..)

Kinda funny and I think that's why people were 'ashamed' to post as Alloy mentioned they seemed to read like.

My opinion is use photos to learn proportions and anatomy and then strike out on your own creative art. Of course my art pretty much sucks so what the hell do I know?